


(What a day for a) daydream

by RhinoHill



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Christmas Fluff, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:47:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29410005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhinoHill/pseuds/RhinoHill
Summary: 'I know you told me to come. But you’ve always said you didn’t want to stop my star from rising. And I could never find the words to tell you that you are my star.I was born a moon, reflecting light.You are the light I was born to reflect onto the world.'--oOo--As the Christmas of her command on Atlantis approaches, Sam is drawn into darkness.She misses Jack more with every passing day. And for the first time, she doubts whether she made the right choice in leaving the love of her life behind, yet again, for the sake of the universe.--oOo--
Relationships: Samantha "Sam" Carter/Jack O'Neill
Comments: 32
Kudos: 38
Collections: Stargate Winter Fic Exchange 2020-21





	(What a day for a) daydream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [craterdweller](https://archiveofourown.org/users/craterdweller/gifts).



> Set at some point after Trio (S4E16), this plays with a universe in which Sam and Jack are committed to each other in spirit, but in which the wedding in SG-1's 200 did not take place.
> 
> Sure, they wanted to. Of course they wanted to. They even spoke about it seriously on the night before she left Earth for the Pegasus galaxy. But the reality is that a relationship between a senior DC General and someone as high profile as the commander of Atlantis would raise questions he wouldn't let her risk.
> 
> @craterdweller, and all other unicorns, I hope you enjoy my take on how daydreams can coexist with reality.
> 
> Happy Valentine's Day. And Merry Xmas xo
> 
> \--oOo--

> What a day for a daydream
> 
> What a day for a daydreamin' boy
> 
> And I'm lost in a daydream
> 
> Dreamin' 'bout my bundle of joy
> 
> And even if time ain't really on my side
> 
> It's one of those days for takin' a walk outside
> 
> I'm blowin' the day to take a walk in the sun
> 
> And fall on my face on somebody's new-mowed lawn
> 
> I've been havin' a sweet dream
> 
> I been dreamin' since I woke up today
> 
> It's starrin' me and my sweet thing
> 
> 'Cause she's the one makes me feel this way
> 
> And even if time is passin' me by a lot
> 
> I couldn't care less about the dues you say I got
> 
> Tomorrow I'll pay the dues for droppin' my load
> 
> A pie in the face for bein' a sleepy bull toad
> 
> And you can be sure that if you're feelin' right
> 
> A daydream will last long into the night
> 
> Tomorrow at breakfast you may prick up your ears
> 
> Or you may be daydreamin' for a thousand years
> 
> What a day for a daydream
> 
> Custom-made for a daydreamin' boy
> 
> And I'm lost in a daydream
> 
> Dreamin' 'bout my bundle of joy
> 
> \- Daydream, The Lovin’ Spoonful

*Sam*

I wish I wasn’t here.

Not _here_ as in Atlantis, standing on the balcony of a city-ship under my command.

I love it here. Love what we’re doing, what we’ve done.

I just … wish I wasn’t in the Pegasus galaxy on Christmas Eve, wearing the silver cocktail dress that reminds me of your hands on my skin — the dress I wore for our our last dinner on earth before I stepped through the gate that brought me here. It’s the only dressy non-uniform outfit I packed, and logically it’s the perfect outfit for the Christmas ball that Jennifer and John have spent every spare moment of the last month organising. Most people would call the dress modest, dropping to just an inch or so above my knees, the silky fabric rising to a cowl neck that fades into thick straps which stay on the edges of my shoulders until I wrap my arms around your neck to dance with you.

I tucked the dress into the bottom of my suitcase as a memory of our final night, and I think the reality of wearing it, here, so far away from you, is what started me on the grey slide into despair.

Through the patterned glass behind my back, my team’s happiness radiates out at me. And I feel caught in an airlock.

It’s not that I wish I wasn’t here.

It’s that I wish I wasn’t _me._ Colonel Samantha Carter. Doer of right things. A galaxy apart from you. Tonight, I wish I was your Sam.

I’ve never doubted my career.

Never, until now.

Because I miss you with an ache that leaches colour from the world, that dulls sound and dampens taste. That gnaws at me, whispering that you don’t miss me as much as I miss you. That you won’t feel the same by the time I finally get back home.

I know you told me to come. But you’ve always said you didn’t want to stop my star from rising. And I could never find the words to tell you that _you_ are my star.

I was born a moon, reflecting light.

You are the light I was born to reflect onto the world.

Sounds drift through the open glass door towards me. Christmas carols, clinking glasses, companionable chatter. I can see the Christmas lights they’ve strung in every single nook in my minds’ eye. The giant fir three they puddled in two weeks ago. Every scheduled contact with earth since 25 November Earth Time, has held a delivery of a few boxes of baubles or tinsel or lights. Or dried fruit for a Christmas cake I despise and only ever pretended to like so I could hand you my slice once you’d finished yours.

The decorations were mostly expensive and store-bought, which may be why the series of giant white placards strung like bunting across the room that spelled out, MERRY XMAS on one letter per sheet, drew a knot in my stomach every time I glanced at them. They were hand made, painted in cheerful sparkly red and gold by Jennifer’s niece and nephew. Their house on earth must be a nightmare of glitter after that. But the presence of children’s joy, no matter how gentle its echo, makes me want to throw off my identity, sprint through the gate and crawl into your arms every single time I see them.

By this afternoon, when the brandy butter and poinsettias started arriving, I’d handed control to John and fled to my quarters. I know I’m not meant to relinquish the gate to anyone. But protocols are more relaxed here. And after a year of loss, the team need tonight. They don’t need me to hold them back with the darkness that has stolen over me, because I’m here and you’re not.

God. I miss you.

It’s too cold for me to be out here without a jacket. My skin protests in rashes of gooseflesh, yet my heart welcomes the chill. I want my body experience that absence that comes after knowing heat, the way my soul does.

I clench my fingers on the balustrade and square my shoulders as the wind moves the balcony door open and the music of the Christmas ball behind me swells.

“I hoped you’d wear that dress.”

My lips crease into a smile at the conjuring of your voice.

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. They don’t tell you how it sharpens the imagination. How it makes me hear your words as if you were standing right there in the doorway. How it fills sterile space air with the scent of your skin.

My heart leaps with desperate longing.

My left hand clamps over my mouth to stifle my sobs, to stop my team from hearing them.

And in this instant, I know I made the wrong choice.

That I should never have left you to come here.

That my place in the universe on Christmas Eve is in your arms.

“Hey.”

A shadow approaches from the doorway, its footsteps muffled by the music and chatter inside. It smells of you.

I twist around to face the intruder.

But he walks with your minuscule limp.

His smiling eyes wash me in tenderness.

My arms fall limply to my sides.

“Jack?” Your name escapes me in a rush of incredulous breath.

He — you — is it you? — steps into slow-motion focus.

It’s you.

It’s you.

“Jack. How?”

My brain is spinning madly round my head, dropping no more than single syllables for me to use.

Your smile penetrates the fog, though. Pulls me back into orbit. The way you somehow always do.

“That’s what ya get for giving Sheppard the gate controls,” you grin.

I want to fold into you and disappear.

But my thoughts won’t let me.

“When? How?”

I’m stuck on this question. You’re in Washington. You can’t be here. People don’t just drop by Atlantis.

I twist to look at the gate, just about the only undecorated element in the enormous indoor space, but your hand catches my shoulder and spins me gently away from the room, back to you.

Your thumb draws a slow circle on my arm.

For so many years, when I was under your command, this tiny gesture of care was all we could give each other. Finally, your touch slows my head to a point where I just stop, and take you in.

“What’s the point of having people owe you favours if you can’t call them in?” You smile your answer to my questions, but there’s hesitation in the lines around your mouth.

For three, long, slow breaths, your hand on my shoulder and your eyes on mine are the only things that exist in the world.

I’m terrified to move and have you vanish.

I’m too scared to reach for you and find out I am dreaming.

“Sam.” Your voice is gentle. Worried. “Are you okay with me being here?”

The echo of my own fear in your words, of finally, _finally_ coming home to find you different, changed, in love with someone else, is what finally breaks my control.

I don’t care who sees me. I don’t care if they report me and I get discharged. I cannot let you stand there and doubt how I feel.

All the lonely nights, all the imagined conversations, every letter I’ve written you and hidden in the suitcase under my bed, knowing I cannot send them in case they’re read as part of the routine monitoring of inter-planetary communication, burst open around me. I crush my lips to your mouth. I drink in your skin with thirsty fingers, thunder my need over you with desperate, clashing teeth. I’m breathless with your taste on my tongue. I need you. I need you. I press the length of my body into you, I moan and thrill when your arms tighten around me.

By the time you pull back, my lips are tender and swollen. But the happiness in your eyes makes my want to kiss you again, right here, in full view of anyone who chooses to glance through the windows. What they think, what they do to me now, is of zero consequence. I love you. And I’m done hiding it.

You are as gentle as I was desperate. Your fingertips linger on my lips, following their lines.

“Well, Merry Christmas to me,” you whisper over a mischievous grin that flips my heart in my chest.

From behind me in the room, the music grows louder again.

 _What a day for a daydream,_ the Lovin’ Spoonful starts to croon.

You catch may fingers and tug me in the direction of the door.

“C’mon, Colonel Carter. They’re playin’ my song. Dance with me.”

And reality comes crashing in.

My feet turn to concrete.

“Wait, can’t we stay out here?”

I’ve gone numb at the thought of facing everyone after I just lost myself in plain view of them, and with the most senior officer to ever have stepped foot on my ship.

It’s as if you can read my mind.

Your eyes grow soft with kindness.

“Trust me,” you say. “They don’t mind. Come on inside.”

With lead in my heart and clammy palms, I let you pull me through the doorway.

I purse my lips, lift my chin and let my eyes drift down from the ceiling, an idiotic attempt to delay seeing the shock I’m sure will be in everyone’s eyes.

The MERRY XMAS bunting has been taken down from its hanging perch.

I frown, and swallow.

Everyone is standing in a line in front of the table holding the food and drinks.

They’re all smiling. Every one of them.

And they’re holding Jen’s niece and nephew's bunting-placards up in front of their chests.

But they got the order wrong.

They misspelt MERRY.

It says MARRY.

Air rushes into my lungs, cold and shining.

The letters they’re holding up spell MARRY ME SAM.

You tug on my hand.

“Well?” You ask, the shy, boyish grin that first made me lose my heart to you twelve years ago making you look impossibly young.

“What?” I breathe around the buzzing in my ears.

You pull me a step closer to the centre of the room, to the light shining down on the cleared space that John and Jen designated our dance floor for the night.

“As of this afternoon, I’m retired.” Your voice carries over my tingling skin and on to my madly grinning team. “So I thought I’d finally give you a chance to kick me to the curb in front of a whole bunch’a people.”

Over your shoulder, I catch sight of Jen and John, the two instigators of this event. Jen is actually vibrating with excitement. Our conversation in that cold, dark cave comes flooding back to me. ‘It’s complicated,’ I’d told her about you. Because the night before I left earth, the last time I wore this dress, we’d talked about forever. But someone as high-profile as the commander of Atlantis couldn’t be involved with someone in DC.

Jen and John are close, though. And he knew about you somehow. And they, and all the others, did this for me. The month of organising. The excitement about the party.

While I was getting sucked deeper and deeper into the black hole of loneliness, they were planning tonight. With you.

Dumbstruck, I look up at you.

You clear your throat theatrically, raise one eyebrow in a worthy imitation of Teal’c.

“Just, please, don’t take three weeks to decide the way you did with the last guy,” you grumble.

Someone behind you sputters a laugh.

“But I’ve already said yes.”

Your smile grows wistful.

“And now that it can really happen, you haven’t changed your mind?” Your words are so soft that I have to strain to hear them over the music.

The certainty that steals over me is as sweet as the first breath on awakening. Because, in the end, this is what we do best. We believe in each other when we forget how to do it for ourselves.

I feather my fingers over your cheek.

“How could I ever change my mind about you, Jack O’Neill?”

_Tomorrow at breakfast you may prick up your ears_

_Or you may be daydreamin' for a thousand years,_ the song rises around us, almost drowned by the team’s whoops and cheers.

I barely hear them, though.

Because, in a night lit by foreign stars, my lips have found yours. And my heart has finally found its home.


End file.
